NEW YORK — The first act of the Oscar season is playing out like an episode of
Survivor.

Several anticipated films once set to be released in the heart of the awards period have been
moved to 2014.

Changes often happen during the highly contentious fall movie season, but rarely has such an
exodus occurred.

Most recently, a World War II drama directed by George Clooney —
The Monuments Men, previously scheduled for release on Dec. 18 — was shifted to early next
year, after the year-end cutoff for eligibility.

Martin Scorsese’s
The Wolf of Wall Street is up in the air, widely expected to move from a November release
to Christmas. Scorsese is racing to edit the ambitious epic, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, for
release this year.

Paramount declined to comment on
The Wolf of Wall Street but announced last week that the spy-franchise film
Jack Ryan has been moved from Dec. 25 to Jan. 17.

What is the reason for the game of musical chairs? The holiday season is packed, so the margins
for capturing box-office and awards momentum are thin. And three Oscar favorites have already
established themselves: Steve McQueen’s slavery epic
12 Years a Slave (to be released on Friday); the global box-office juggernaut and
technical marvel
Gravity; and the hostage docudrama
Captain Phillips, starring Tom Hanks.

The favorite is
12 Years a Slave, which picked up a leading three nominations from the Gotham Independent
Film Awards on Thursday. The film, staring Chiwetel Ejiofor, has been hailed for depicting American
slavery more faithfully than it had ever been.

“It’s going to go on its own journey, and we’ll see where that ends up,” Ejiofor said of the
film’s trajectory as a possible award winner. “The important thing is that people should see it
with their own eyes if there’s hyper-buzz about it.”

Gravity led the box office for three consecutive weeks and drew almost-universal raves
from critics.

The reasons for the changes in release dates have less to do with the apparent lock on awards
than with the challenges of each film.

The extensive visual effects for
The Monuments Men needed time for completion, Clooney said.
Foxcatcher, too, needed more time to finish, according to Sony Pictures Classics. No
reason was given for the Weinstein Co.’s postponement of
The Immigrant, which premiered in May at the Cannes International Film Festival.

Grace of Monaco is moving to March, Harvey Weinstein has said, because “It’s just not
ready.”

Director Olivier Dahan disputed that, telling the French newspaper
Liberation that he considers the film finished and disapproves of the cut Weinstein is
seeking. (The Weinstein Co. declined to comment.)

Although the holiday season is one of the most prestigious and lucrative times of the year to
release a film, the early winter months are typically the doldrums for moviegoing.

Competition will be far less stiff when
The Monuments Men opens next year. Its goal will be to follow the playbook of a few other
recent awards-season emigrants: Scorsese’s
Shutter Island, which earned $294.8 million worldwide after a Feb. 18 debut in 2010; and
The Great Gatsby, $348.8 million worldwide with a release in May.

A lot can change between now and the 86th annual Academy Awards on March 2. But, even in
October, some things are locked.

“Awards don’t make your movie more pretty or more ugly,” said Alfonso Cuaron, the director of
Gravity. “You’ve already finished it. The rest is not in my hands.”